The main aim of this research was to investigate whether empathy influenced the distributive reasoning of adolescents. A sample of 120 teenagers, controlled by sex and type of school (public or private), took part in the investigation. Distributive justice was evaluated through a dilemma in which the participants had to decide the fairest way to share money among six workers who had worked together but were different terms of productivity, necessity and place of birth. Empathy was measured with IRI (Davis). The results show that role-taking, personal distress, sex and type of school influenced the amounts of money distributed. These results are discussed in the context of Hoffman's theory and empirical research on morality and distributive justice.
Morality; justice; distribution; empathy
